Plague of the Manitou

by Graham Masterton

  ‘David,’ she said. ‘Even if this really is you, I don’t understand how it can be. How did you get in here?’

  He kept on smiling and gave her a little shake of his head. ‘That’s the easiest question to answer. When I came up to see you, your door wasn’t properly closed. I didn’t walk through the wall, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not a ghost.’

  ‘But I saw you lying dead in the morgue.’

  ‘I spoke to you, Anna, even then.’

  ‘Yes, but you said, “Get it out of me!” Whatever was happening to you, you seemed to be terrified, and you seemed to be hurting, too. Even when you were lying in your casket, at your funeral, you said, “Get it out of me!” You said that you couldn’t bear it, whatever it was.’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t understand myself what it was. But now I know, and I’m so grateful for it. I’m alive again, Anna, and I’ve come back to you, and you and I can go on living, just as we did before I got sick.’

  He reached out for her, but again she stepped back. ‘David … I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I don’t even believe it’s really happening.’

  ‘I swear to you, Anna, it is really happening. I’m here, in the flesh. Touch me. Feel me. I’m your David, come back to you.’

  ‘But how? And what was it – this thing that you were screaming for me to get out of you? This thing that you didn’t understand what it was but now you’re so grateful for?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  David’s smile faded, and he frowned in a way that she had never seen him frown before, as if he were concentrating very hard on remembering something. ‘You were never religious, were you?’ he asked her.

  ‘What in God’s name does religion have to do with it?’

  ‘No, listen to me – you never really believed that there was an afterlife, did you? You never thought that there was a Heaven, or a Hell. You never believed in angels – or demons, for that matter.’

  ‘When you’re fighting a virus, David, you don’t have to believe in demons. A virus doesn’t have a soul, or a conscience. A virus has absolutely no pity whatsoever. A virus is a thousand times deadlier than any demon.’

  ‘But, don’t you get it? That’s what viruses are. “Demon” was only a name given to viruses by people in medieval times who didn’t understand why they got sick or why they went mad or why they acted like they were possessed.’

  Anna said, ‘David … if your coming back to life again wasn’t strange enough, this is getting even stranger. I’m very, very frightened now. How do you know this? Is this what Brian Grandier told you?’

  David nodded. ‘Brian Grandier brought the virus to America himself.’

  ‘He brought it? But why? Is he some kind of terrorist? This virus has been killing thousands of people, and it’s probably going to kill thousands more before we can stop it – even if we can stop it!’

  ‘That’s the whole point, Anna. It has, but it hasn’t. All those people who seem to have died will come back to life again, just like I have.’

  ‘Why? Why kill people and then revive them?’

  ‘To change them. To make them into better people. To stop them from ruining this country any more than they have already.’

  Anna looked at David for a long time without saying anything. He smiled at her again, and he was obviously doing everything he could to win her confidence.

  ‘It may seem like a deadly virus, Anna, but it’s the opposite. After it’s spread all the way across the nation, you’ll see what America was supposed to be like. Idyllic.’

  Anna ignored that. ‘How did you know I was here?’ she asked him.

  ‘We keep our ear to the ground, that’s all.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I’m one of them now, Anna. To be truthful, I don’t have any choice. Like I said, this nation is going to go back to being the paradise it was always intended to be.’

  ‘I can’t take any more of this,’ said Anna. ‘You’re going to have to go.’

  David reached out again, quickly, and this time he managed to grasp her left hand. She tried to twist it away, but he held it tight, and the terrible thing was that it felt warm, and strong, and just like David’s hands had always felt before.

  ‘I thought we were lovers,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, we were. But you died.’

  ‘Now I’m back. So what’s changed?’

  ‘You have. You said so yourself. And now you’re all involved with Brian Grandier and this virus of his. You suffered so much pain yourself, David. You convulsed. You brought up so much blood. Do you really want millions more people to go through the same agony that you did, and for what? Some pie-in-the-sky about paradise?’

  David said, ‘Everything destructive and murderous that has ever been done in this world has been done in the name of God.’

  ‘David, let go of my hand. You have to leave now. Please.’

  ‘That so-called Scalping Virus you cured. That really made your reputation, didn’t it?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘They named it the Scalping Virus because it made people’s hair fall out and left their heads raw and bleeding, just like they’d been scalped.’

  ‘So? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘Tell me: who used to scalp their victims?’

  ‘What? What does that have to do with anything? Indians, I always thought.’

  ‘That’s what most people think, but that’s where you’re wrong. Scalping was introduced by Europeans, as a way of killing off Native American tribes, or at least reducing their numbers so they couldn’t fight back when their land was taken from them.’

  ‘David, you’re hurting me.’

  ‘Bounty-hunting, that’s what it was. Back in the eighteenth century, the governors of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts paid good money for every Indian scalp – man, woman or child over twelve, to prove that they’d been killed. Oh, yes. In the off-season, that’s what kept plenty of European farm-workers in whiskey, hunting down the Lenni-Lenape and the Hurons and scalping them. They didn’t even have to be warriors to get scalped. Didn’t have to represent any kind of threat. So long as they were Indians.’

  Anna at last managed to wrench her hand free. The two of them stood staring at each other, both of them breathing hard.

  ‘I wasn’t hallucinating, was I?’ said Anna. ‘Those Native American wonder-workers, or whatever they call themselves – I really saw them, didn’t I?’

  David said, ‘Yes. And you saw the nuns, too.’

  ‘I’m so bewildered. I don’t understand any of this. Where do nuns come into it?’

  ‘It’s simple. People don’t think that spirits from different religions ever encounter each other, but of course they do, just like living people from different religions. Those two wonder-workers, Matchitehew and Megedagik, they can call on any Native American spirit that you can think of, and Brian Grandier can summon up any Christian spirit. Brian Grandier summoned up Gressil, the spirit of infection, who possessed the nuns at the Ursuline convent in Loudun in the seventeenth century. Matchitehew and Megedagik summoned up Awonawilona, the Native American spirit who gives you the ability to be in more than one place at the same time. Together, those two spirits are infecting the whole country with the same virus that infected me.’

  ‘But why, David? What are they trying to do?’

  ‘What do you think? Matchitehew and Megedagik want their land back – and revenge for the way that their people were massacred when it was stolen from them. Brian Grandier wants to see religious bigots punished for all the suffering they’ve caused over the centuries. They have a common cause, Anna. They want justice at last for the millions and millions of innocent people who have been tortured and slaughtered in the name of God.’

  Anna went back to the couch and sat down. ‘This is not you talking, is it, David? What did you ever know about nuns and Native Americans? What did you ever care about them, for that matter?’

  ‘This is
me, Anna. I swear to you. But I had to make a choice, if I was going to survive. I had to agree to join Matchitehew, Megedagik and Brian Grandier and help them give this country back to the people it really belongs to.’

  ‘David, I’m too tired to argue with you any more. I need time to think about this, really.’

  David came around the couch and hunkered down in front of her. Again, his expression was deeply serious. ‘I have to ask you just one thing, Anna. This is the whole reason I’m here tonight, apart from wanting to see you again. I have to ask you not to help to destroy this virus. Tell the CDC that you’re backing out. Tell them that you’re not well. Any excuse will do.’

  ‘David, I can’t do that! Even while we’re talking about this virus, it’s killing people! Can’t you hear those sirens? Don’t you remember what pain you went through? Don’t you remember how scared you were? I have to find a cure for it! It’s more than what I do, it’s what I am!’

  ‘Maybe if you think about it again in the morning, when you’ve had some sleep? I’m sorry. I should have realized how tired you must be.’

  ‘No, David. I can’t change my mind. I’m still in a state of shock that you’re here at all, and I’m totally confused about what you and Brian Grandier and these wonder-workers think they’re trying to do. You can’t turn back time. This country is never going to be the same as it was before the Europeans arrived here. It’s impossible. It’s insane. And I can’t allow millions more people to suffer, whatever the justification for it.’

  David was silent for a few moments, but then he said, ‘OK. I respect your decision. It’s a pity, but if I really can’t persuade you …?’

  ‘No, David. You can’t.’

  ‘In that case there’s only one more favor I need to ask. Is it OK if I spend the night here? I’ll sleep on the couch, and I’ll be heading out as soon as it gets light.’

  Anna said, ‘I’m frightened of you, David. I thought you were dead. You were dead. But here you are. And you’re not the same as you were before you died. You’re talking about Indians, and you’re all mixed up with those nuns. Do you know what one of those nuns did to me? It still makes me sick to my stomach to think of it. And the language she used.’

  David nodded, as if he knew who and what she was talking about. ‘I understand how you feel, Anna. I’m sure I’d feel exactly the same if you died and came back to life. But I promise you I’ll stay here on the couch, and I won’t ask you again to quit the virus team. OK?’

  Anna looked at him. She had loved him so much, and they had done so much together – talked, laughed, argued, made love. For some reason she had a mental picture of them walking hand-in-hand through Pere Marquette State Park, one golden fall, with leaves flying in the wind all around them. She had thought then that she had known him better than she had known herself. No matter what had happened to him, how could she say no?

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But where will you go tomorrow? Am I ever going to see you again? Is Brian Grandier here, too? Are you going off with him?’

  She was thinking to herself: If Brian Grandier is still here, and he really is responsible for spreading the BV-1 virus, I ought to report him to the police or the FBI.

  ‘Let’s just get some sleep, shall we?’ said David. ‘I’ll be in touch, don’t worry.’

  Anna undressed and went to bed. She was too tired to take a shower – she could do that in the morning, before she went to the Public Health laboratory.

  She had given David a blanket and said goodnight, but she hadn’t kissed him. His face had looked so waxy, standing in the lamplight, and he had seemed distracted. Before she’d closed her bedroom door she’d watched him take off his coat and his shoes and lie down on the couch. She’d never felt so confused in her life. It was him, it was David, and she wanted him, and felt such a strong urge to comfort him and take care of him, but at the same time his presence terrified her. She could almost understand how beaten wives must feel: I love him desperately, but why is he so unpredictable, and why does he frighten me so much?

  She had closed her bedroom door and turned the key, but then she’d turned it back again. He had promised to stay on the couch, hadn’t he? And supposing he came in to say goodbye in the morning and found that she had locked him out! She might just as well tell him that she didn’t trust him any more and that their relationship was over.

  She still wanted to find out exactly how he had managed to come back to life again, and what he was doing with Brian Grandier and those mysterious, beetle-covered wonder-workers. If she knew that, maybe it would be easier for her to understand how the BV-1 virus was spread and how it replicated itself. But one thing she did know for sure: no amount of cajoling from David was going to stop her from isolating BCV-1 and formulating an antiviral agent that would stop it in its tracks.

  Exhausted as she was, she didn’t think that she was going to be able to sleep, but in less than ten minutes her eyes had closed and she was breathing deeply, Her right hand was lying on the pillow next to her, and her fingers gradually opened, as if she were trying to feel if raindrops had started to fall.

  She dreamed that David was lying next to her, very close, so close that she could feel his breath against her cheek. She dreamed that he kissed her hair, and then her eyelid, and her nose, and her lips.

  His hand slid down under the sheet and massaged her thigh. Then he lifted her nightshirt and caressed her stomach.

  ‘David,’ she murmured. ‘Don’t, I’m too tired.’

  He kissed her again, and now his hand made its way further up inside her nightshirt and cupped her left breast. He gently tugged and twisted her nipple until it stiffened, and then he reached across to play with her other breast.

  ‘Don’t,’ she repeated, but she knew that she was dreaming and so she didn’t do anything to stop him. Besides, he was making her feel aroused and warm and needed, and protected, too. She hadn’t felt like that since the night he had come home from Chicago, looking so sick.

  With the tip of his middle finger he lightly stroked her clitoris – so lightly that she could barely feel it, and she ached for him to stroke it more forcefully. She even lifted her hips so that he would be stroking it harder. But he kept on and on, with that light, teasing, tantalizing touch, while she became more and more slippery and started to ache for him to slide himself inside her.

  At last, when she could feel the warm beginnings of an orgasm rising up between her legs, he dragged back the sheets and climbed on top of her. He opened her thighs wide and nestled the swollen glans of his penis between the lips of her vulva, but then he waited before he penetrated her, one long second after another.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she said, in a low, hoarse voice. Then, when he still didn’t push himself into her, she reached up and grasped his buttocks, digging her long sharp fingernails into his flesh. She pulled him downward, until he was so deeply inside her that his penis touched the neck of her womb and made her jump.

  It was then that she realized she wasn’t asleep, and this wasn’t a dream at all, and that David was really on top of her, inside her, and that she was making love with a man who had died.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she screamed. ‘Oh my God get off me! David! Get off me! David! David, get off me!’

  But instead of lifting himself off her, David forced himself into her even harder, and pinned her shoulders down against the bed. She struggled and kicked and jerked her hips up and down, trying to free herself, but he was far too heavy for her, and far too strong.

  ‘David, get off me! David! Listen to me! David!’

  He didn’t answer. All Anna could hear was his thick, harsh breathing. Every muscle in his body was locked tight, and he was keeping himself inside her, as deep as he could. He was making no attempt to move himself in and out, which frightened her even more than if he had been trying to bring himself to a climax.

  ‘David – what are you doing? David, for God’s sake get off me!’

  He still said nothing, but now he grasped her throat i
n both hands, with the balls of his thumbs pressed against her larynx, and started to choke her.

  She gripped his wrists and tried to pull his hands away. She couldn’t even budge them a fraction of an inch. The tendons in his wrists felt like taut steel wires. He kept on pressing harder and harder until she started to see prickles of light floating in front of her eyes. She was desperate to scream at him to stop, but she couldn’t take any air into her lungs.

  She made a last desperate effort to heave herself sideways, but it was useless. He was obviously determined to kill her, and he wasn’t going to stop squeezing her throat until he had.

  Although the bedroom was already dark, it seemed to Anna to grow even darker. She was gradually losing her sight, and she knew that it would take only a few seconds now before she lost consciousness.

  She let go of his wrists and allowed her arms to flop down. Even though every instinct was urging her to fight for her survival, she said to herself, relax. Her brain felt as if it were bursting from lack of oxygen, but her medical discipline was telling her that if she wanted to stay alive she had to appear to be dead.

  She lay there, unmoving. The last few seconds were the worst, as David kept squeezing her neck and crushing her larynx even harder with his thumbs. Her lungs were aching, and she was not only going blind but deaf, so that she could no longer hear David panting, or the creaking of the mattress underneath her.

  Then, quite abruptly, he took his hands away. She needed every ounce of her willpower not to take in a huge, screaming gasp of air, but she managed to control herself enough to breathe in thin and steady through her nostrils. David sat up straighter and stayed like that for a moment, with his penis still inside her, and his chest was rising and falling so hard that he obviously couldn’t detect that she was still breathing, too. She faintly heard him say something, but her hearing was so blurry that she couldn’t make out what it was. He slowly withdrew himself, and she suddenly felt the wetness between her legs. He rolled off the bed and stood up. She kept her eyes closed, but she could sense that he was standing close to the bed, staring down at her.